Thirteen Days

Synopsis: The Cuban Missile Crisis – as played out from within the Kennedy administration.

Review: It’s only ten years old, but still this mainstream recreation of the Cuban Missile Crisis feels awfully dated. It really is a product of the time before sensible, ‘independent’-spirited cinema could spring out organically from within the industrial cogs of Hollywood. Instead, the evidently serious canvas of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the inner-workings of the Kennedy administration, gets somewhat sullied by the cheesy grammar redolent of larger Hollywood productions – a truly awful, bombastic musical score and some weird and superficial shifts to black-and-white (presumably to remind the lesser minds in the audience that this was a moment of actual history).

It really is the Cuban Missile Crisis played out on a grand scale though – and in some respects, why not? This was after all one of the key moments of the Cold War, and perhaps the closest the planet has yet come to nuclear conflict. That very fact is ogled on portentously when director Roger Donaldson opens the film with the apocalyptic sight of a huge nuclear mushroom cloud, and any moment where military engagement comes close to occurring (the ships and subs navigating the blockade, and the spy planes flying over Cuba) get as much focus as the political machinations in Washington. Those machinations are probably the strong point of the film. Sure, the diplomatic route is sketched in broadly – it’s all military hawks versus the Kennedy boys, and Kevin Costner’s private secretary is a flaky device to act as convenient conduit to the Kennedys’ inner-circle – but it’s certainly a well-acted film. The decision to cast the relatively unknown Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp as JFK and RFK makes particular sense. Big names would shift audience attention away from the taut developments of the plot to the distracting sidegame of fawning at famous actors impersonating hugely renowned historical figures. (June 2013)